Elizabeth Taylor

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was an actress who held both British and American citizenship. She started out as a child performer in the early 1940s and became a major star of classic Hollywood in the 1950s. By the 1960s, she was the highest-paid movie star in the world, and she stayed a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her seventh on its list of the greatest female screen legends.

Taylor was born in London to American parents who were socially prominent. Her father was an art dealer, and her mother had been a stage actress. When she was seven, in 1939, her family moved to Los Angeles. She made her film debut in a small part in the 1942 Universal Pictures film *There's One Born Every Minute*, but the studio dropped her contract after a year. MGM then signed her, and she became a popular teen star after appearing in *National Velvet* (1944). In the 1950s, she moved into adult roles, starring in the comedy *Father of the Bride* (1950) and earning critical praise for her performance in the drama *A Place in the Sun* (1951). As one of MGM's most reliable box-office draws, she appeared in the historical adventure *Ivanhoe* (1952) alongside Robert Taylor and Joan Fontaine. Taylor resented the studio's control and many of the roles it chose for her.

She wanted to quit acting in the early 1950s but then started getting parts she enjoyed more. The epic drama *Giant* (1956) followed. Over the next few years, she starred in several films that were both critical and commercial successes, including two adaptations of Tennessee Williams plays: *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof* (1958) and *Suddenly, Last Summer* (1959). For the latter, she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress. Although she disliked playing a call girl in *BUtterfield 8* (1960)—her final film for MGM—she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for that performance.

Her most famous role was in *Cleopatra* (1963), a film with a huge production budget and schedule that earned multiple Academy Award nominations and won four. Taylor's film career began to fade in the late 1960s, though she kept making movies into the mid-1970s. She married her *Cleopatra* co-star Richard Burton in 1964, and they appeared together in 11 films, including *The V.I.P.s* (1963), *The Sandpiper* (1965), *The Taming of the Shrew* (1967), and *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?* (1966). She received the best reviews of her career for *Virginia Woolf*, winning her second Academy Award and several other honors.

Taylor's private life drew intense media attention and controversy, especially her marriages to Eddie Fisher and Burton. She began a relationship with Fisher while he was still married to someone else, and with Burton while both were married to other people. She and Burton—known as "Liz and Dick"—divorced in 1974, reconciled, and remarried in 1975. That second marriage ended in divorce in 1976, after which she focused on supporting the career of her sixth husband, U.S. Senator John Warner. In the 1980s, she took on her first major stage roles and appeared in several television films and series. She was the second celebrity, after Sophia Loren, to launch a perfume brand. Taylor was also one of the first celebrities to get involved in HIV/AIDS activism. She co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. From the early 1990s until her death in 2011, she devoted her time to philanthropy, earning several awards, including the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2002.

Born in London to American parents, Taylor had dual citizenship from birth. Her father, Francis Lenn Taylor, was an art dealer, and her mother, Sara Sothern, was a former stage actress. They were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas. Through her father's family, she was a descendant of the Taylors of Virginia and a third great-granddaughter of Joseph Taylor. The family moved to London in 1929, opening an art gallery on Bond Street; their first child, a son named Howard, was born that same year. Their social circle included artists like Augustus John and Laura Knight, as well as politicians like Colonel Victor Cazalet, who became Taylor's unofficial godfather and a major influence on her early life. She attended Byron House School, a Montessori school in Highgate, and was raised in the Christian Science faith, which her mother and Cazalet practiced.

In early 1939, with war looming in Europe, U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy urged Francis Taylor to bring his family back to the United States. Sara and the children left first in April 1939 on the liner SS *Manhattan*, moving in with Taylor's maternal grandfather in Pasadena, California. Francis stayed behind to close the London gallery and joined them in December. In early 1940, he opened a new gallery in Los Angeles. After a brief stay with the Chapman family in Pacific Palisades, the Taylors settled in Beverly Hills, where the children attended Hawthorne School.

In California, Taylor's mother was often told that her daughter should try out for films. People were especially struck by Taylor's eyes, which were a deep blue—almost violet—and framed by dark double eyelashes, a result of a genetic mutation. Sara was initially against the idea, but after the war made returning to Europe unlikely, she saw the film industry as a way for the family to fit into American society.